A Rural Blog that provides views & insights from a Conservative Georgia Democrat

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Open Elections.....NOT!

The GOP’s need to game voting has spread like political cancer. Republican-controlled legislatures have
gone to great lengths to complicate many aspects of the voting process,
from registration to ballot-access rules. The goal is to suppress perceived Democratic voting
blocks, particularly people of color, the poor and students. What’s especially pernicious about the best known of these tactics,
stricter voter ID laws, is that it adds a nasty twist to the otherwise
simple requirements to be a legal voter. Instead of satisfying age,
residency and citizenship status and showing that one is mentally fit
and has no felony record (as in most states) these new laws say you
cannot get a ballot unless you also have a specific kind of state
government photo ID. Not everybody has that ID, or the documents needed
to obtain it. The right to vote has never been based on plastic.

This anti-democratic trend is larger than just photo ID laws. Florida
passed laws imposing fines and filing deadlines on voter
registration groups, which, despite being blocked by a court recently.

Today’s majority Caucasian dominated GOP knows it cannot hold onto power in an increasingly
multicultural America unless it keeps communities of color, young
people and women from voting.
You would think today’s Republicans would be more confident in their
ideas, stand by them and trust the voters to decide. But that is not the
case.